On the positive side, we have a confirmed moving company and pickup date for our household effects. I also have identified a property management company to handle the rental of the condo after we’re gone (though I still have a massive amount of work to do in terms of getting carpet and a dishwasher installed, and the condo painted). And last Tuesday my sister and brother-in-law filled a 17-foot U-Haul truck with furniture and miscellaneous items that we’ve given them in lieu of taking with us to California.

Not all is rosy, however, and the (hidden) costs for the move continue to mount. Yesterday I contacted GEICO–with whom I’ve had my auto insurance for more than ten years–to get an updated quote based on the California address. We may not be able to afford to have a car in California, it turns out, as at first they said our premium–around $850 every six months in Virginia–would go up to $3,000 every six months in the Bay Area. When I protested (and pointed out that they incorrectly showed Jeff as having had his driver’s license for only 1 year instead of the actual length of 13 continuous years), they bumped it down to $1,300 every six months, still an increase of more than 50% over our current premium.

I told them not to process the change of address, since we haven’t yet moved, and now I’m on the hunt for new insurance. Progressive so far is coming out ahead, at just under $1,000. The other usual names–State Farm, Allstate, Farmer’s–are coming out about the same as GEICO’s revised figure. And while I have my homeowner’s insurance with State Farm, I’ve had a bad experience with their auto insurance: I was insured with them from 1987 through 1994, with a perfect driving record and no claims. Then I applied for renter’s insurance and when they discovered that I had a roommate–who had his own car and insurance and never drove mine–they cancelled my car insurance. When I asked why, they said that my roommate might drive my car, and they considered him an unacceptable risk–he’d been in two accidents that weren’t even his fault (in both cases, in fact, the other driver had actually been charged)–so they wouldn’t insure me either.

And for some inexplicable reason, in the last couple of days Verizon apparently cancelled all the services on our home phone except basic local service–we hadn’t even contacted them yet about changing or moving our account, so I’m completely at a loss to know why. Voice mail, caller ID, call waiting, etc. all stopped working; they’ve now reset our voicemail, but all our stored messages–incoming and outgoing–were gone. They haven’t been able to explain why this happened, and my online account information now shows that I have none of those services installed on my account (last night it showed the correct information, even though the services didn’t work, but today it shows none of the features I’ve been paying for the past nine years).